He laughed gently, ladling stew from a large pot into a bowl.
I considered slowly circling the reason I’d come, but I sensed he already knew. Besides, Gail’s anxiety was pulling at me still, and I wanted to get to the point. “Why were you expecting me, Ned?”
He placed the bowl before me, along with a thick slice of dark bread, and settled onto a low bookcase opposite, leaning his back against the rough wooden wall. “I have my reasons. Why are you here?”
His coyness was like the confirmation I didn’t want to hear.
“Because there’s a lot the paper knows nothing about, some of which goes back to your time on the planning commission. Why did you leave, Ned? Gail and I both know it wasn’t because you were burned out.”
The small smile returned. “How is she?”
I let a little of my disappointment show. “You should find out for yourself. She’s tired and overworked and grimly determined to reinvent herself. She’s also heartbroken over what we both think you did.”
He shifted his gaze to the tips of his work boots but didn’t speak.
“We’ve been examining how Gene Lacaille got the permits for the convention center. One day, after weeks of waffling, you came down like a ton of bricks on his side-”
“Is something wrong with the project?” he interrupted, his face for the first time creased with concern.
“How do you mean?” I asked, startled.
“Are you investigating something about the project that might be wrong-dangerous?”
I considered my options. Instinctively, as a friend, I would have tried to set him at ease. But I was no longer sure where he stood in that light, and his attitude so far had only heightened my concerns. “You trying to soothe a guilty conscience?”
His eyebrows knitted together in a scowl. “Don’t.”
I rose from my seat angrily, Hardy’s eyes watching me carefully. “Don’t what, Ned? Don’t try to find out what happened, so you can martyr yourself in splendid isolation?” I stared at him. “Jesus Christ. Would you come clean if people were in danger? Is that the message? What if I told you your project was tied to murder?”
He seemed to shrink into himself but remained silent.
I sat back down, ignoring my meal, and spoke in a quiet, measured tone. “For decades you busted your butt for that town, preaching to others to get involved. You made it a point that integrity and politics were not contradictory. I can’t believe that was all a crock. You stumbled, Ned-that’s all. I don’t know who put the obstacle in place, but I damn well know that commission meeting was the payoff.”
“It was a good project,” he muttered.
“If it’ll help, I’m not debating that. I need to know why you voted the way you did.”
He raised those sorrowful eyes. “If the project’s sound, what does it matter?”
I played the only cards I had, weak as they were. “Because I think people have been killed in connection to it. If your actions were due to any pressure, then the same person who stuck it to you may’ve killed them.”
Ned rubbed his face with his hands, pressing his eyes against his palms. He crossed to the easy chair and sank into its embrace. Hardy lifted his nose and touched the fingers of his hand. “It can’t be the same man,” he finally said in a near whisper.
“How can you know that?” I asked.
“It doesn’t make sense.”
I almost laughed with frustration. “When does murder make sense?”
He was staring into the flames and spoke directly at them, as if wishing his words to be cremated. “I did what I did to maintain the belief people had in me-my family, my friends, the whole community… Not my reputation-that a man has to earn, and if he loses it, it’s because he deserved to. But for something bigger-other people’s faith in a system they came to personify in me. Like it or not-whether I encouraged it or not-it was no longer my own reputation, which meant it was no longer mine to throw away.”
As self-serving as it sounded, this might have been partly true. Ned Fallows had been a guiding light to many, Gail among them. Had he come clean and admitted his corruption at the time, it would have shaken a lot of people and turned a few into cynics.
But for me, to whom most idealism is suspect at best, his logic only made a mockery of the integrity he’d inspired. Gail had been shocked and saddened by the thought that her idol may have fallen, but she hadn’t been corrupted herself. The ideals that Ned Fallows had helped nurture in her were her own now, regardless of what happened to him.
But he’d obviously chosen to turn moral cowardice into a virtue, and no argument from me was going to reverse that choice. I gave up any pretense of debate and flatly asked him, “Who was it, Ned?”
He turned to look at me. “You think the man who fingered me could also be a murderer. Assuming you’re talking about the two people mentioned in the paper, can you say for a fact they were murdered?”
I hesitated, my flimsy theory exposed for what it was. “An analysis of the girl’s hair showed she’d been sedated with phenobarbital during the last week of her life. She was being kept in a coma.”
“She couldn’t have died of a heart attack?”
I was outraged by his rationalizations. “She was eighteen years old, for Christ’s sake.”
“But you have no proof she was killed.” He pushed on the arms of his chair and rose. “When you have proof and a suspect, I’ll tell you who was responsible for my actions.” He ushered me toward the door, barely giving me time to put on the coat I’d removed upon entering.
“I thought a person was responsible for his own actions,” I said bitterly, my sense of betrayal approaching Gail’s.
“That’s not a discussion I choose to have-with you or anyone else,” he said and closed the door.
It was almost three in the morning when I got back home. The moonlight slanting over the bed revealed Gail’s dormant shape, suspiciously still for someone who’d become a very light sleeper. Knowing she was awake, I nevertheless undressed quietly and slipped under the covers.
A few moments later, her hand folded over my wrist. “How did it go?”
I’d been debating how to answer her all the way back from Lunenburg and had finally settled on the honesty Ned Fallows had denied me. “Disappointing. He basically admitted he’d been compromised, although he’d thought the project was worthwhile, but he wouldn’t tell me why or by who. He said he cut and ran to protect the people who’d believed in him-that he didn’t care about his own reputation but was worried his downfall could damage the hope he’d spent his whole life nurturing in others.”
I’d tried to sound neutral, to allow Gail whatever leeway she might need to reach her own conclusions.
I needn’t have worried. After a long reflective pause, she curled one leg over mine and murmured into my shoulder with a sigh, “What bullshit.”
I didn’t have long to enjoy the peace of mind Gail had brought me. I had barely nodded off before the phone next to me began ringing.
“Joe? It’s Sammie. Patrol just called. I thought you’d want to know-Mary Wallis is missing. Her house is all lit up, the door’s wide open, but she’s disappeared.”
“You there yet?”
“No-I’m heading out now.”
“I’m on my way.”
Gail asked me what was up as I replaced the receiver. I repeated Sammie’s brief message. She slid out of bed, reaching for her clothes. “I’m coming, too.”
I didn’t argue. She wasn’t only Mary’s friend, she was-however marginally-one of the SA’s staffers. More to the point, I knew she needed to come. While the loss of Ned Fallows had been in spirit alone, it had been real all the same, and Gail had borne it stoically-perhaps overly so. The need for action now seemed healthy and reasonable, and I wasn’t about to interfere.
Most of the houses on Allerton Avenue were dark, except for a couple of Mary’s neighbors. The patrol car stationed opposite her address, and Sammie’s just beyond it, were shrouded by night, only the plumes from their exhaust pipes betraying their running engines.